On Grief and Bliss with Kelly Watkins (Ep. 2 in the Soul-Care Series)

Kelly Watkins: 00:00:00

I feel like intimacy with yourself has to involve

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catastrophic grief, you know, that knock you to your knees.

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I can't catch my breath.

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Grief, and that you find pieces of yourself and definitely some

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compassion that is inaccessible.

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Otherwise, if we don't fall down and grind your face into the asphalt a little...

Amanda Lux: 00:00:37

Welcome to a Lone Traveler's Guide to the Divine, a podcast for

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dreamers, seekers, healers, and anyone on their healer's journey.

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My name is Amanda Lux and I'm the creator of The Elevation Hive School and Community

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for Energy Medicine and Dreamwork.

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And this is the second episode in a series on soul care, which is a term

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that I've created and I write about in my book, the Soul Care Workbook, which

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offers a multidimensional view of tending to the deeper self or tending to our

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whole self beyond the physical body or even our emotions or mental states.

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Which is implied in self-care, but soul care really goes beyond that.

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Incorporating tools and exercises based in polarity therapy that help

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us to tend to our energy body as well.

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In this series of episodes, I am sharing some poems from the book.

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Uh, I write a poem for each of the elements, and I will be

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opening and closing each episode in this series with those poems.

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And in each episode I will be focusing on soul tending by exploring sort of the,

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what we call in polarity, the negative and positive polls of each element.

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And today's element is the ether element , and we're focusing on

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the, , continuum of grief and bliss.

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Those are the positive and negative pull experiences that reside in

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our ether or our throat chakra.

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So I invited a really dear friend of mine, kelly Watkins to share some

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of her wisdom around this topic.

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From a polarity perspective, she is an incredibly wise learned person and

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she is going through her own cancer journey, and has probably endured more

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loss than anybody I've ever met in my entire life, with so much grace.

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She spent most of her life supporting other people through their grief.

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I would definitely consider her a grief expert.

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She was a hospice nurse for nine years and labored and delivery

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nurse for the same amount of time.

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She works now doing polarity therapy with and leading mourning circles

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where you mourn, uh, and grieve together, which is just a beautiful

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thing, , for people who have experienced all kinds of trauma and loss.

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And, you know, just anyone who's been human and had challenges

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you're all welcome to attend.

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So I'm excited to share that conversation where Kelly and I discuss grief in some

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of her, her wisdom and , some helpful tools and suggestions that she offers.

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But before I get into the interview, I wanted to just give a little bit of

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context around this energetic continuum of the ether that I was sharing, and kind

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of offer a little attunement to the e.

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and a little story.

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So it's gonna be a juicy episode full of resources

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. And if you're listening to this and

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something, this is definitely going to offer some medicinal bits for you.

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And if you're, you're not there currently, and you're wondering, well,

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why would I want to, uh, dip into grief?

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How would that even serve me to consider

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I mean, don't we usually wanna keep grief away, , if we're not in it

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actively, why would we want to go there?

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Is really what I wanted to say.

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And I wanna just offer this idea that we all experience grief and

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at different times, and especially in our culture, there's not a lot

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of resource and or encouragement.

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To really fully experience our own grieving, it's often encouraged

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that we hide it or move through it as quickly as possible, and there's

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a lot of judgment and shame around feeling those difficult emotions.

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And I wanted to share this great quote by Francis Weller who wrote the

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book, the Wild Edge of Sorrow, rituals of Renewal, and the Sacred Work of.

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He says, I am not suggesting that we live a life preoccupied with sorrow.

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I am saying that our refusal to welcome the sorrows that come to us, our inability

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to move through these experiences with true presence and conscious awareness,

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condemns us to a life shadowed by grief.

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welcoming.

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Everything that comes to us is the challenge.

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This is the secret to being fully alive.

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So just honoring that we are all going to experience grief at

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different times, and this is because our energy is meant to pulse.

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It contracts and expands.

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and we're not meant to stay open.

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We're meant to close at times, and the amount of grace that we can bring to

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this process of dipping in and out of our positive and negative experiences.

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Is really what we want to learn how to cultivate is that ability to move between

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them, to hold them even simultaneously, to actually embrace and go into our grieving

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while maintaining that deeper knowing of our oneness and our interconnection

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to feel in the depths of our soul, the, the separation and the struggle.

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and the sorrows.

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While experiencing and staying in touch with the depth of our joy and

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our connection and our belongingness.

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This is how we can increase our vitality.

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This is how we can fully experience what we're here to experience in the full.

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. So just to consider this, that

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in that pulsation, that we're not here to avoid one end or the other.

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and to get out of grief as quickly as possible isn't really the point.

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It's to experience it as thoroughly and with as much resource as possible

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to modulate that in the ways that we need to while also moving through

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what we need in order to really.

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and there's a really beautiful story that illustrates this that I wanted

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to share and I found, I came across this story in one of the old handouts

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I had for the Polarity energetic communications class, which I'm actually

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about to teach in a couple of days

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here in Olympia, Washington.

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And this story is called the, but.

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There is a person who finds a cocoon of a butterfly and one

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day a small opening appears.

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They sit and watch the butterfly for several hours as it struggles to force

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its body through the little hole until it seems to stop making any progress.

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It appears as though it could go no further.

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This person decides to help the butterfly, so they take a pair of scissors and snip

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off the remaining bit of the cocoon.

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The butterfly then emerges easily, but it has a swollen

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body and small shriveled wings.

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The person continues to watch the butterfly because they expect that

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at any moment the wings will enlarge and expand and be able to support

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the body, which would contract in time, but neither happens.

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In fact, the butterfly spends the rest of his life crawling around with

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a swollen body and shrivelled wings.

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It is never able to fly.

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What this person in their kindness and haste does not understand is that

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restricting the cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get

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through the tiny opening is the way that the fluids get forced from the

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body of the butterfly into its wings so that it can be ready for flight.

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Once it has achieved its freedom from the co.

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Sometimes our struggles are exactly what we need in our life, and if

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we go through our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us.

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We would not be as strong as we could have been, and we could never fly.

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So just tuning into now this story and

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recognizing that

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we can trust our own process, even the uncomfortable,

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, terrible, struggling parts.

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and we can be patient with ourselves in those moments.

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Remembering that those two are necessary experiences in order

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for us to learn how to fly.

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And I wanna just invite you now to just tune into your own ether as you

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consider this to your own throat center.

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Maybe taking a breath and allowing the words that I'm speaking to just wash

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over you for a moment as we invoke the ether element, tuning into that continuum

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of grief and bliss that resides there.

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Bringing your awareness into your body and the sensations and to the subtle.

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That resides within and around your physical body and in this location,

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in the Throat Center, we have the seat of our truth and our ability

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to be expressed authentically.

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And here we can open up, we can be heard, we can be seen and witnessed,

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and we can deeply listen to others without, with our whole being.

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and we cannot even listen to spirit, to our own guidance, our inner

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guidance, our higher guidance as well.

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From this place, we can engage in the conversation that Spirit is having with us

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and, and our throat center.

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When our energy is flowing, we can experience incredible connect.

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A blissful sense of oneness as we merge with the vast

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universal awareness that is us.

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And then there will be moments when our energy will contract, when we

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will move into a cycle of smallness and we may feel alone or far away.

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Or helpless.

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Or constricted.

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And that's okay.

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And we're just gonna say hello to the grief and to the old

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grief that might be there.

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And we're going to acknowledge that we're here to experience

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the full range of our humanness,

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that we're here to be both vast and separate.

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and that the gift is that when we can hold both of these poles and

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slide between them with fluidity and grace, then we can drop, then we can

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experience ourselves as that single drop in the ocean separate from the rest

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while simultaneously know.

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and feeling and experiencing ourselves as the entire ocean itself.

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We are both.

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And I'm gonna open this episode with this poem from the Soul Care

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workbook on Ether Space Sound.

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Form grief, the unborn star filled knights and open vistas,

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imperfections and reflections.

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Choking notions.

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Om filled oceans of renewal space.

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Oneness and separation.

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The hollows, the bellows, the hallowed places.

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Whole spacious, graciously returning to center to now flying through Infinity

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Sparkling with pur.

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Vibing with the frequency of luminosity, invoking, yaking, all things no things.

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The creative spark, stark and empty, full of neutrality,

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unlimited possibilities space.

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As I move into this conversation with Kelly Watkins, I invite you to listen.

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Enjoy yourself.

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This is a fun conversation.

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She's a very fun person.

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As we explore and splash around in the topic of grief.

Kelly Watkins: 00:14:48

You

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have Kelly, an incredible perspective that's

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really rare and sacred and special.

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And so, because you know, a lot of us have our own grief and some

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of us get extra loads of that.

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and then there's those of us who show up and hold space for other people's

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grieving in all kinds of ways.

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And you are one of those people that have been specifically on the planet holding

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space for all kinds of grieving, for, for decades, maybe your entire life.

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Have you, when you were little, were you doing this?

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I think you were.

Kelly Watkins: 00:15:29

I was.

Kelly Watkins: 00:15:30

And thank you.

Kelly Watkins: 00:15:31

Oh my gosh.

Kelly Watkins: 00:15:33

Uh, yeah, I think I was about four years old doing an animal cemetery.

Kelly Watkins: 00:15:38

My friend Carol and I like, uh, walking up and down the alleys

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and to find a dead animal.

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Cause we wanted to bury it.

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We wanted to say a prayer, we wanted to make a cross and we wanted to have some

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kind of special thing cuz oh my gosh, poor thing died and he's gonna do this.

Kelly Watkins: 00:15:54

I don't know what the feeling was, but it was something, you know, it felt like

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some important job that we needed to.

Kelly Watkins: 00:16:01

Yeah.

Kelly Watkins: 00:16:02

Until my mom found out and she was, you know, a little grossed out and

Kelly Watkins: 00:16:07

she was a little grossed out by it.

Kelly Watkins: 00:16:09

Yeah.

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. Amanda Lux: I think that's really cool.

Kelly Watkins: 00:16:13

But I love that, that you did that and that that's sort of been

Kelly Watkins: 00:16:16

a theme throughout your life.

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And I know that you spent a long time working in this field of death and

Kelly Watkins: 00:16:26

I know that you've spent a long time also working in the field of, of birth.

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, do you wanna say anything about your life experience in relationship to grief or

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how that's taken you to where you are now?

Kelly Watkins: 00:16:42

Yeah, so I think that having a mom that died when I was

Kelly Watkins: 00:16:45

young certainly ignited something.

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I was about 22 when she died, and you know, little babies and you just kind

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of want that older layer ahead of you.

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And if it's not there, then.

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A little, you know, I don't wanna say broken, but it

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definitely shapes who you become.

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And in some ways I think the death work that I've done is still

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tending to that pain that I have.

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You know, of course.

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But also I'm fascinated by how little attention we put towards

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something that is basically the one of the largest moments of our life.

Kelly Watkins: 00:17:21

Like we have to literally muster up the courage to.

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Goodbye to everything.

Kelly Watkins: 00:17:27

We love every person.

Kelly Watkins: 00:17:28

We love every feeling.

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We love every emotion, every experience, every food, every orgasm, every whatever.

Kelly Watkins: 00:17:35

It all goes away and nobody wants to talk about it.

Kelly Watkins: 00:17:40

for good reason,

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but I don't know.

Kelly Watkins: 00:17:44

I'm a sucker for the underdog and I'm bummed that nobody wants

Kelly Watkins: 00:17:48

to walk arm and arm with death.

Kelly Watkins: 00:17:50

It's just the.

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This is the story of your life.

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How are you gonna fit everything in, in this little thing?

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And if you don't, what happens?

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And if you do, what happens?

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And how do you walk with other people that are saying goodbye

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to literally all the things that they have loved in their lifetime?

Kelly Watkins: 00:18:11

So I guess mostly I just wish that maybe now my biggest platform is

Kelly Watkins: 00:18:17

that I want people to feel really.

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, like they're good stewards to humans and that they, they wanna help people through

Kelly Watkins: 00:18:25

the really difficult things that maybe nobody has been able to help them through.

Kelly Watkins: 00:18:30

And just how to be a good community member through caring for one

Kelly Watkins: 00:18:35

another with death and birth.

Kelly Watkins: 00:18:37

You know, that whole gig.

Kelly Watkins: 00:18:39

Yeah.

Kelly Watkins: 00:18:40

So I was a nurse, like my mom died when I was 22.

Kelly Watkins: 00:18:43

I started nursing school the day after her funeral per her.

Kelly Watkins: 00:18:49

Per her orders and then did labor and delivery for a good eight years and

Kelly Watkins: 00:18:53

then did hospice for another eight years and it had, you know, that weird

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experience of seeing those as both in the same job, you know, the same

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experience, the same veil for sure.

Kelly Watkins: 00:19:06

Somebody's coming in, somebody's going out.

Kelly Watkins: 00:19:10

They both have about as much information.

Kelly Watkins: 00:19:14

, you know, . Yeah, it's kind of cool.

Kelly Watkins: 00:19:16

It's really like a beautiful thing and um, I just tr love trying to find as many

Kelly Watkins: 00:19:23

ways as I can to wiggle that into whatever it is I'm doing in the world at the time.

Amanda Lux: 00:19:29

Yeah.

Amanda Lux: 00:19:30

Well, and I know that you've been also leading some mourning circles and.

Amanda Lux: 00:19:37

That's morning.

Kelly Watkins: 00:19:38

Not good Morning.

Kelly Watkins: 00:19:40

Morning.

Kelly Watkins: 00:19:40

Not good morning.

Kelly Watkins: 00:19:42

I did have one person show up for it thinking it was a good morning circle

Kelly Watkins: 00:19:46

and it was a cry morning circle.

Kelly Watkins: 00:19:48

So I might, I might change the name.

Kelly Watkins: 00:19:53

. Amanda Lux: Well, I know that you've been

Kelly Watkins: 00:19:56

I mean, there are.

Kelly Watkins: 00:19:58

Grief circles, but I love, I actually love the idea of mourning as a

Kelly Watkins: 00:20:02

communal practice, as something that we could come together and do to mourn

Kelly Watkins: 00:20:08

together is really a beautiful thing.

Kelly Watkins: 00:20:11

And you're working with all kinds of people with all kinds of grief.

Kelly Watkins: 00:20:14

And you do that in private practice and you do that in groups and.

Kelly Watkins: 00:20:18

. I know that you know some things about that.

Kelly Watkins: 00:20:21

In addition to walking with your own grief, I know like you've been

Kelly Watkins: 00:20:25

dealing with cancer, you have had multiple mothers die recently.

Kelly Watkins: 00:20:31

You were mentioning that when we first got on here, . That sounds weird.

Kelly Watkins: 00:20:36

Multiple mothers.

Kelly Watkins: 00:20:37

I had a remarkable set of mothers.

Kelly Watkins: 00:20:39

There's no denying it, and so their absence is definitely felt right now.

Kelly Watkins: 00:20:44

propelling me more into this subject and more into honoring like our ancestors

Kelly Watkins: 00:20:50

before they become dead ancestors.

Kelly Watkins: 00:20:52

Like we wanna really capture these humans that shape us and soak,

Kelly Watkins: 00:20:59

soak them in before they're gone.

Kelly Watkins: 00:21:02

Yeah, our culture's a little funny about that, but yes, I have definitely,

Kelly Watkins: 00:21:10

uh, . I had one of my, my ex-mother-in-law was 97.

Kelly Watkins: 00:21:16

My other mother-in-law was 87.

Kelly Watkins: 00:21:20

And um, I think my stepmom was up in her late seventies, but such a contrast

Kelly Watkins: 00:21:26

from my mom, mom who died at 55.

Kelly Watkins: 00:21:30

Yeah.

Kelly Watkins: 00:21:32

and now I'm kind of doing this, I, I don't feel like I'm dying right this

Kelly Watkins: 00:21:36

minute, but I have been diagnosed with a blood cancer that they

Kelly Watkins: 00:21:40

consider incurable three years ago.

Kelly Watkins: 00:21:43

And let me just say, I thought, wow man, this fits, I'm gonna really, really know

Kelly Watkins: 00:21:49

how to handle myself being diagnosed with cancer cuz I'm really knowledgeable.

Kelly Watkins: 00:21:58

, you know where that's going.

Kelly Watkins: 00:21:59

Yeah.

Kelly Watkins: 00:21:59

I just.

Kelly Watkins: 00:22:01

, I'm not good at it.

Kelly Watkins: 00:22:02

It's not the same thing.

Kelly Watkins: 00:22:04

to walk in your own finiteness.

Kelly Watkins: 00:22:07

There, there's something in there of course, but it's a whole different

Kelly Watkins: 00:22:10

experience to have courage or to be clear and communicate and know what

Kelly Watkins: 00:22:17

you need and, and to do it, you know, alone is, uh, I mean like without

Kelly Watkins: 00:22:22

a partner, it's just really a trip.

Kelly Watkins: 00:22:24

But as we know, there's no accident.

Kelly Watkins: 00:22:26

So I'm walking this thing, really trying to hear.

Kelly Watkins: 00:22:31

You know, the information and then transmute it or, or recreate

Kelly Watkins: 00:22:36

it or do it in a new recipe so that it's helpful before I crop.

Kelly Watkins: 00:22:39

You know, I'm gonna have some really helpful wisdom that can bubble up to

Kelly Watkins: 00:22:44

the surfaces for everyone, for my kids,

Amanda Lux: 00:22:45

especially.

Amanda Lux: 00:23:02

Getting to hear you talk about your life and your walk and your path and

Amanda Lux: 00:23:06

where you are now is so humbling to me.

Amanda Lux: 00:23:10

I just feel in awe of all that you have done and are you have a breadth

Amanda Lux: 00:23:15

of experience and knowledge when it comes to this topic, specifically

Amanda Lux: 00:23:19

of grief and a way acknowledging and holding space for the importance of

Amanda Lux: 00:23:25

grieving and acknowledging our grief.

Amanda Lux: 00:23:28

And I just.

Amanda Lux: 00:23:30

I just wanted to give you an opportunity to speak to that because there's people

Amanda Lux: 00:23:36

who are listening who have grief.

Amanda Lux: 00:23:38

We all have grief.

Amanda Lux: 00:23:39

You know, it actually makes me wanna kind of choke up just thinking about , how much

Amanda Lux: 00:23:44

grief we all have in all the different ways that we carry it, you know, that

Amanda Lux: 00:23:49

we accumulate it just from being born.

Amanda Lux: 00:23:52

It's difficult being.

Amanda Lux: 00:23:55

and there's all kinds of difficulties that come up along the way, and we're

Amanda Lux: 00:24:00

not, we're not taught how to deal with it.

Amanda Lux: 00:24:03

We're not really given those tools.

Amanda Lux: 00:24:06

And maybe at some point in history they were preserved and

Amanda Lux: 00:24:10

passed down from our elders.

Amanda Lux: 00:24:12

But like you were saying, in our current culture, our elders are not

Amanda Lux: 00:24:17

valued in the way that they could.

Amanda Lux: 00:24:21

and their wisdom and all that they have walked through and accumulated

Amanda Lux: 00:24:25

and learned is not necessarily sought after in the way that it could be.

Amanda Lux: 00:24:31

I guess my point is that it, it's, it's difficult to be human.

Amanda Lux: 00:24:35

We all have grief and we don't really know how to do that.

Amanda Lux: 00:24:40

You know, I think most people could be better at it.

Amanda Lux: 00:24:44

I could be better at.

Amanda Lux: 00:24:46

, and I mean, I, I've thought a lot about it, you know, uh, just in a

Amanda Lux: 00:24:50

polarity context, of course, how to hold space for the whole spectrum of

Amanda Lux: 00:24:56

experience that we, we get to have, but specifically that one grief in and of

Amanda Lux: 00:25:03

itself relating to the ether element, the throat chakra in the polarity model.

Amanda Lux: 00:25:09

And I'll just say that, that.

Amanda Lux: 00:25:11

, there's the positive pull and the negative pull emotion associated

Amanda Lux: 00:25:15

with every element or chakra.

Amanda Lux: 00:25:17

And for ether, the positive pull would be that sense of total oneness,

Amanda Lux: 00:25:23

bliss out connectedness with spirit.

Amanda Lux: 00:25:27

And for the negative pull it would be grease and then, and that's not bad.

Amanda Lux: 00:25:34

It's just like the, the other end of the pole . Right.

Amanda Lux: 00:25:38

I would, I would rather say south.

Amanda Lux: 00:25:40

And North Pole then positive, negative in this context, actually,

Kelly Watkins: 00:25:44

it's true.

Kelly Watkins: 00:25:46

Yeah.

Kelly Watkins: 00:25:46

It's a giant continuum too.

Kelly Watkins: 00:25:48

I think that it's, you aren't in touch with that part of your identity until you

Kelly Watkins: 00:25:55

experience grief and loss and that becomes just like a part of your soul then.

Kelly Watkins: 00:26:01

And I think it changes in, in expression maybe.

Kelly Watkins: 00:26:07

Potency and sometimes still, I mean, my mother's been gone for 33 years.

Kelly Watkins: 00:26:12

Sometimes I'll pop open the fresh sheets from the dryer and just crawl

Kelly Watkins: 00:26:17

to my knees brawling like a baby.

Kelly Watkins: 00:26:19

Cuz I need my mom.

Kelly Watkins: 00:26:21

Yeah.

Kelly Watkins: 00:26:22

And that's really hard for us to accept in our culture where we really want to

Kelly Watkins: 00:26:26

kind of have a remedy for everything.

Kelly Watkins: 00:26:29

We wanna smooth things and.

Kelly Watkins: 00:26:32

Be, um, you know, we, we just want an antidote, . It's such a bummer

Kelly Watkins: 00:26:39

and I'm really enjoying this process.

Kelly Watkins: 00:26:42

Maybe not for the last three years, but certainly in and out of it, of just, uh,

Kelly Watkins: 00:26:51

just devoting my heart to that part as well, like just the real disturbance of.

Kelly Watkins: 00:27:00

I'm just so sad and I'm just so bummed out, and I'm also so, so hopeful and

Kelly Watkins: 00:27:07

happy and like, gosh, wouldn't that be interesting if I just have one of

Kelly Watkins: 00:27:11

those like miraculous healings and I'm totally down for it, but it's hard to

Kelly Watkins: 00:27:16

walk with this new set of circumstances or this new feeling in your body

Kelly Watkins: 00:27:22

or this new absence of brain power.

Kelly Watkins: 00:27:26

you know, whatever the things are that Finiteness bring.

Kelly Watkins: 00:27:30

. Yeah.

Kelly Watkins: 00:27:30

To your experience, it's probably a little bit the same for everyone

Kelly Watkins: 00:27:35

because it's just a, I don't think I've ever tended to a person that was

Kelly Watkins: 00:27:39

dying, that expected on on some level.

Kelly Watkins: 00:27:43

I don't think that we walk around going, I bet it's around the corner.

Kelly Watkins: 00:27:46

You know?

Kelly Watkins: 00:27:46

I think it just shows up and you go, oh shit.

Kelly Watkins: 00:27:50

Whoa.

Kelly Watkins: 00:27:50

I don't know how to walk with the end of me.

Kelly Watkins: 00:27:54

I don't know what that even.

Kelly Watkins: 00:27:56

. Yeah.

Kelly Watkins: 00:27:58

I would say that I've never really seen grief being expressed in the same way.

Kelly Watkins: 00:28:03

Really.

Kelly Watkins: 00:28:04

Really.

Kelly Watkins: 00:28:05

And even when our parents died, each of my five siblings had a completely different

Kelly Watkins: 00:28:12

version of what acclimating to life was.

Kelly Watkins: 00:28:18

Yeah.

Kelly Watkins: 00:28:18

And all of the little things that you get to patch up the holes

Kelly Watkins: 00:28:22

of energy leaking out of your.

Kelly Watkins: 00:28:26

Right.

Kelly Watkins: 00:28:27

Sometimes booze, sometimes a bike.

Kelly Watkins: 00:28:32

You know, different tools and, and when I think of tending energetically

Kelly Watkins: 00:28:38

or being a doula, a life doula to your soul, like what is that?

Kelly Watkins: 00:28:43

And really just is a lot of patience and a lot of listening, which is

Kelly Watkins: 00:28:47

what we have been trained for.

Kelly Watkins: 00:28:50

You and I.

Kelly Watkins: 00:28:51

We're trained to listen and have patience.

Kelly Watkins: 00:28:55

. Yeah.

Amanda Lux: 00:29:05

I love that.

Amanda Lux: 00:29:05

That nobody does it the same way, and that even within our own

Amanda Lux: 00:29:09

experience, it's not linear and it's, it, it, there's no remedy.

Amanda Lux: 00:29:16

It's something that we have to learn how to be with as opposed to get through,

Amanda Lux: 00:29:23

and that it does change and evolve.

Amanda Lux: 00:29:28

and become easier at different times.

Amanda Lux: 00:29:31

Yet there's no way to, to just say, this is what it is, or this is how it will be.

Amanda Lux: 00:29:37

We're always a little blind with it.

Amanda Lux: 00:29:39

We really

Kelly Watkins: 00:29:40

are.

Kelly Watkins: 00:29:41

Yeah.

Kelly Watkins: 00:29:41

And I think, uh, you know, I guess that comes from a lot of

Kelly Watkins: 00:29:47

different things, but what I'm.

Kelly Watkins: 00:29:49

What I have a challenge with is equipping like the idea or the

Kelly Watkins: 00:29:54

notion that you could equip the people that will be grieving for you.

Kelly Watkins: 00:29:59

Like is there something that you can do?

Kelly Watkins: 00:30:01

Is there some part of the puzzle that you can capture and live while you're here

Kelly Watkins: 00:30:06

in your life and in your relationships?

Kelly Watkins: 00:30:08

Is there healing to be done before you're dead?

Kelly Watkins: 00:30:12

That's where I'm at.

Kelly Watkins: 00:30:12

That's where I'm at right now.

Kelly Watkins: 00:30:13

I was like, okay, how do I do.

Kelly Watkins: 00:30:17

in a way that's healthy for everyone.

Kelly Watkins: 00:30:19

Yeah.

Kelly Watkins: 00:30:21

To revisit parenting errors or to revisit life mistakes or whatever.

Kelly Watkins: 00:30:26

What, uh, I mean, I'm.

Kelly Watkins: 00:30:28

We all have tons of it and some people are like, dude, I don't need to go back.

Kelly Watkins: 00:30:32

I'm good with whatever I chose and how I'm living and what I believe and

Kelly Watkins: 00:30:36

who I hurt and whatever, whatever.

Kelly Watkins: 00:30:38

Like that's just what I did and I don't feel like I have a million apologies to

Kelly Watkins: 00:30:44

do, but I'm darn sure curious and hopeful and interested if maybe we could find

Kelly Watkins: 00:30:51

some soft water to kind of float around in and be like, let's talk about some of.

Kelly Watkins: 00:30:58

Like the experiences that you had that created pain in your life.

Kelly Watkins: 00:31:02

Mm-hmm.

Kelly Watkins: 00:31:02

But also so that we can untangle some of our knots so that we can

Kelly Watkins: 00:31:07

untangle some things and have a deeper understanding of what some of those

Kelly Watkins: 00:31:12

memories were, or instances or, you know.

Amanda Lux: 00:31:17

Wow.

Amanda Lux: 00:31:17

That just sounds like such a gift.

Amanda Lux: 00:31:19

And you know, just in that thought of like, we're all

Amanda Lux: 00:31:24

going to die at some point.

Amanda Lux: 00:31:27

wouldn't it be good if we lived like that?

Amanda Lux: 00:31:29

Just making sure that we're untangling all of our knots, clearing up any of

Amanda Lux: 00:31:33

the misconstrued things, places we've unintentionally caused harm to go

Amanda Lux: 00:31:39

back and do those repairs in our life.

Amanda Lux: 00:31:41

I, I feel inspired.

Amanda Lux: 00:31:43

I had this idea on that vein when I reached out to you recently.

Amanda Lux: 00:31:48

I was just sitting in bed the other morning and suddenly it occurred to me,

Amanda Lux: 00:31:52

I was thinking about this topic of grief and grieving and how do we do it well?

Amanda Lux: 00:31:56

How do we do it thoroughly?

Amanda Lux: 00:31:58

How do we do it with the most possible consciousness and attention and to just

Amanda Lux: 00:32:05

really, really be good at grieving?

Amanda Lux: 00:32:07

How do we do that?

Amanda Lux: 00:32:08

What does that take?

Amanda Lux: 00:32:10

And then I started to think about really why.

Amanda Lux: 00:32:15

Why is this something that we don't consider until we have a

Amanda Lux: 00:32:18

death sentence or or until we're in the throes of it ourselves?

Amanda Lux: 00:32:23

Why aren't we doing more preventative grief work?

Amanda Lux: 00:32:27

And especially, why aren't we teaching our children these skills in school

Amanda Lux: 00:32:34

or before they even get to school?

Amanda Lux: 00:32:35

Because children often grieve open.

Amanda Lux: 00:32:40

and thoroughly they're, they're pretty good at it, actually.

Amanda Lux: 00:32:43

Perfect.

Amanda Lux: 00:32:43

When they're little, and it's only over time as we get older that we

Amanda Lux: 00:32:47

start to separate from our truths, our authentic experience and our authentic

Amanda Lux: 00:32:53

ability to process our experiences.

Amanda Lux: 00:32:55

And what if we were to like help them stay with that innate ability to grieve

Amanda Lux: 00:33:04

What would the adult world look like?

Amanda Lux: 00:33:07

if we weren't told to stop crying and do the thing, you

Amanda Lux: 00:33:10

know, get it together or, yeah.

Kelly Watkins: 00:33:13

And think about all of the times that we grieve, that

Kelly Watkins: 00:33:15

doesn't have anything to do with death.

Kelly Watkins: 00:33:17

We're grieving all the time.

Kelly Watkins: 00:33:19

Yeah.

Kelly Watkins: 00:33:19

We don't really know how.

Kelly Watkins: 00:33:21

Yeah.

Kelly Watkins: 00:33:21

I mean, maybe we do.

Kelly Watkins: 00:33:22

Maybe it is.

Kelly Watkins: 00:33:23

Maybe the right way is to lay down and kick your feet and

Kelly Watkins: 00:33:26

vomit when you cried so hard.

Kelly Watkins: 00:33:29

Yeah.

Amanda Lux: 00:33:30

Well certainly that's a right way.

Amanda Lux: 00:33:32

I think that probably the right way would.

Amanda Lux: 00:33:36

, I am guessing that the right way to grieve would be whatever feels the

Amanda Lux: 00:33:40

most right to you in the moment.

Amanda Lux: 00:33:42

. Kelly Watkins: Amen.

Amanda Lux: 00:33:44

Amen.

Amanda Lux: 00:33:45

And it has changed quite a few times.

Amanda Lux: 00:33:47

You know, it just does grief changes and especially when you be access some

Amanda Lux: 00:33:52

new resource that you didn't have, and then you kind of rise up a little and

Amanda Lux: 00:33:56

then something brings you down and you know, you shuffle over to the east or

Amanda Lux: 00:34:00

the west with your grief, . But I do think that it, there is some really

Amanda Lux: 00:34:06

helpful information and that, um, grief doesn't have to be an overwhelming idea.

Amanda Lux: 00:34:13

We're already living with grief anyway.

Amanda Lux: 00:34:15

It's just a, a new way to maybe hold it for yourself and hold it,

Amanda Lux: 00:34:19

brothers.

Amanda Lux: 00:34:20

Yeah.

Amanda Lux: 00:34:22

Well, I mean, one thing that I think about, so in polarity

Amanda Lux: 00:34:27

there is that continu.

Amanda Lux: 00:34:30

of the whole spectrum of experience within each of the elements, and for the ether,

Amanda Lux: 00:34:37

as we mentioned, it's grief or as an experience of blissful interconnectedness

Amanda Lux: 00:34:43

on the other end of that continuum.

Amanda Lux: 00:34:46

But they're related.

Amanda Lux: 00:34:48

And one thing that I really love about the e Easter element in

Amanda Lux: 00:34:51

particular, in the the medicine wheel, we have the four directions.

Amanda Lux: 00:34:56

Ether is sort of the whole wheel itself.

Amanda Lux: 00:34:59

It contains everything.

Amanda Lux: 00:35:01

And there's this sense of that when you go into ether, you're touching all the

Amanda Lux: 00:35:05

things and you're holding all the things.

Amanda Lux: 00:35:09

And so when I think about grief in particular as an experience, or

Amanda Lux: 00:35:16

even bliss as an experience in total interconnected, There is on that

Amanda Lux: 00:35:23

continuum, this feeling of being in touch with all the things at once.

Kelly Watkins: 00:35:37

It's so funny.

Kelly Watkins: 00:35:38

You can think I'm a big dork, but I ha I make appointments for my grief now.

Kelly Watkins: 00:35:42

I really do because I, you know, I'm kind of a pretty dramatic human being and I

Kelly Watkins: 00:35:47

really like to cause a big some chaos.

Kelly Watkins: 00:35:51

I just do.

Kelly Watkins: 00:35:52

I like to feel it so loud and big, and.

Kelly Watkins: 00:35:56

, but I just make appointments for a long time.

Kelly Watkins: 00:35:58

It's been Thursday at six and then at six o'clock I say okay,

Kelly Watkins: 00:36:03

and I, I mean probably before six I'll start getting my situation.

Kelly Watkins: 00:36:07

It's bath usually and I call it a wailing bath . And I put baking soda and I put

Kelly Watkins: 00:36:13

salt and I put EPS and salts and I'll output sometimes some essential oils.

Kelly Watkins: 00:36:18

Bergamont is really good, I think, for like just allowing stuff to, for me.

Kelly Watkins: 00:36:25

and sometimes my tuning forks, and sometimes I'll just put on some great

Kelly Watkins: 00:36:28

music and sometimes absolutely nothing.

Kelly Watkins: 00:36:30

But I just know that that particular time is for me to really be genuine

Kelly Watkins: 00:36:35

with what my heart feels like and not to feel embarrassed about letting it

Kelly Watkins: 00:36:41

rip and just like really going into it.

Kelly Watkins: 00:36:43

And sometimes it's that chaotic.

Kelly Watkins: 00:36:47

A lot of structure to it, but sometimes I really wanna get better and I

Kelly Watkins: 00:36:50

wanna like take what I'm hearing and feeling and transform it into

Kelly Watkins: 00:36:54

something that could be useful.

Kelly Watkins: 00:36:56

So getting in the tub while it's empty, and then putting a plug in and filling

Kelly Watkins: 00:37:00

it and then doing your wailing back.

Kelly Watkins: 00:37:03

And then when you, uh, pull the plug, you stay in the tub and you

Kelly Watkins: 00:37:07

keep wailing if you have it in you.

Kelly Watkins: 00:37:09

Yeah.

Kelly Watkins: 00:37:09

So the idea is that it.

Kelly Watkins: 00:37:12

Going out of the tub, going out of your body, and it has been unbelievably

Kelly Watkins: 00:37:17

helpful to just, um, maybe it's just saying it's important enough to me

Kelly Watkins: 00:37:24

that I'm going to show up for it every single week no matter what.

Kelly Watkins: 00:37:27

Even if it's ridiculous.

Kelly Watkins: 00:37:29

, even if that's not what other people do, I just get in the bathroom, cry my

Kelly Watkins: 00:37:32

head off, and it's helping me . Yeah.

Amanda Lux: 00:37:35

Well, and I know that you mentioned you've been

Amanda Lux: 00:37:37

doing this with others too.

Amanda Lux: 00:37:39

You have shared this tool with other,

Kelly Watkins: 00:37:43

that you work with?

Kelly Watkins: 00:37:45

I do.

Kelly Watkins: 00:37:45

I work, I work for a nonprofit in Arizona, but that does a 16 week program

Kelly Watkins: 00:37:52

with all kinds of different traumas.

Kelly Watkins: 00:37:56

uh, we some really gnarly stuff.

Kelly Watkins: 00:37:58

So a lot of grimy, deep grief.

Kelly Watkins: 00:38:00

And

Amanda Lux: 00:38:01

many humans,

Kelly Watkins: 00:38:03

you know, especially in the United States, are not,

Kelly Watkins: 00:38:06

like we've been saying, we just don't, we don't validate grief.

Kelly Watkins: 00:38:09

We think that means we're wimpy or we think that we should have our

Kelly Watkins: 00:38:13

crap together in order to not feel that, or that there's something

Kelly Watkins: 00:38:16

that other people have that we don't, that helps us be stronger.

Kelly Watkins: 00:38:20

I don't know.

Kelly Watkins: 00:38:22

What all of that is.

Kelly Watkins: 00:38:23

It's probably a million different things, but I think just saying, I have your back.

Kelly Watkins: 00:38:29

I know you're hurting.

Kelly Watkins: 00:38:30

I'm gonna be here with you while you cry it out.

Kelly Watkins: 00:38:33

I don't have any answers, but I definitely care about us enough to hold, hold this.

Kelly Watkins: 00:38:41

Yeah.

Amanda Lux: 00:38:43

That's beautiful.

Amanda Lux: 00:38:45

Thank you for sharing that tool.

Amanda Lux: 00:38:48

I think that could be really useful for some people.

Amanda Lux: 00:38:52

, Kelly Watkins: what do

Amanda Lux: 00:38:55

I know you paint

Amanda Lux: 00:38:56

your grief.

Amanda Lux: 00:38:58

I definitely think that art is a huge outlet for me, for all the

Amanda Lux: 00:39:04

range of emotions and you know, specifically when I think about grief.

Amanda Lux: 00:39:12

Absolutely.

Amanda Lux: 00:39:13

Like creating, crying, singing, you know?

Kelly Watkins: 00:39:20

Yeah.

Amanda Lux: 00:39:21

singing is, is a helpful tool for me.

Amanda Lux: 00:39:25

But you know, I'm not in a place in the moment in my life where I'm

Amanda Lux: 00:39:28

doing a lot of active grieving.

Amanda Lux: 00:39:30

I have been there, I visit grief and I definitely hold

Amanda Lux: 00:39:34

space for it with other people.

Amanda Lux: 00:39:37

It's not something I'm, I'm daily tending in the moment, but that's

Amanda Lux: 00:39:42

just where I'm at in the moment.

Amanda Lux: 00:39:44

I certainly have, and I, when I have been in acute states of, of grieving.

Amanda Lux: 00:39:51

, I can recall that there were so many emotions there that, that

Amanda Lux: 00:39:56

remind me of that hoop of the medicine wheel, of the, the way

Amanda Lux: 00:40:00

that grief contains all the things.

Amanda Lux: 00:40:02

Like there was anger, there was frustration, there was

Amanda Lux: 00:40:06

helplessness, there was disgust.

Amanda Lux: 00:40:10

You know, there were all these other emotions that, that were

Amanda Lux: 00:40:13

really part of that grief soup.

Amanda Lux: 00:40:17

, it was super bitter, you know, , it did not taste good at all, and I

Amanda Lux: 00:40:23

didn't wanna eat it or chew it up, you know, I didn't want to digest that.

Amanda Lux: 00:40:27

It was just like, blah.

Amanda Lux: 00:40:30

It's something that I personally, in my experience, of acute

Amanda Lux: 00:40:33

breathing, wanted to get it out.

Amanda Lux: 00:40:35

And so finding ways to get it out with, you know, sound or movement,

Amanda Lux: 00:40:40

you know, running has been helpful.

Amanda Lux: 00:40:41

I've had.

Amanda Lux: 00:40:43

Runs where I'm crying and yelling while I'm running and that's

Kelly Watkins: 00:40:46

really great , that that would be good.

Amanda Lux: 00:40:49

I run to move energy.

Amanda Lux: 00:40:51

I paint, I create to move energy, but, and to like to be in the experience for sure.

Amanda Lux: 00:40:57

Painting is really helpful for that.

Amanda Lux: 00:40:59

It helps me to like to really view it from different angles, take a good deep

Amanda Lux: 00:41:04

look at things and then I see things that I didn't see before and maybe.

Amanda Lux: 00:41:10

The value in that for me personally, is that I can honor it as a whole picture.

Amanda Lux: 00:41:17

It gives me a chance to step back and see it in a new light, and then I can really

Amanda Lux: 00:41:23

appreciate that there's even beauty there.

Amanda Lux: 00:41:26

You know that the bliss is in the grief, and at some point, if you

Amanda Lux: 00:41:30

go through it deeply enough, there is this lovely, blissful place on

Amanda Lux: 00:41:34

the other side, this sort of soft,

Kelly Watkins: 00:41:38

floaty feeling.

Kelly Watkins: 00:41:39

Well, our teacher says, hang out in the fire long enough and you'll slip on into

Kelly Watkins: 00:41:45

the softest water you've never seen.

Kelly Watkins: 00:41:47

Mm-hmm.

Kelly Watkins: 00:41:49

, it's our, our natural desire to just step out of the discomfort.

Kelly Watkins: 00:41:54

And I, I don't mean like stay in it and celebrate it and, and belong to it like

Kelly Watkins: 00:41:59

you're in a, a club, cuz I do that too.

Kelly Watkins: 00:42:03

I definitely sign up for grief and I believe what that is.

Kelly Watkins: 00:42:09

A storage container of things that you didn't quite know how to process through

Kelly Watkins: 00:42:13

for your life, and so now maybe they need a little extra attention or you know,

Kelly Watkins: 00:42:19

you're still learning this part that you weren't listening to for a few decades.

Kelly Watkins: 00:42:23

The word that I think about it is wholeness.

Kelly Watkins: 00:42:27

, I feel like intimacy with yourself has to involve catastrophic grief, you

Kelly Watkins: 00:42:33

know, that knock you to your knees.

Kelly Watkins: 00:42:35

I can't catch my breath.

Kelly Watkins: 00:42:37

Grief, and that you find pieces of yourself and definitely some

Kelly Watkins: 00:42:42

compassion that is inaccessible.

Kelly Watkins: 00:42:45

Otherwise, if you don't fall down and grind your face into the asphalt

Amanda Lux: 00:42:50

a little, I definitely feel you there about the whole.

Amanda Lux: 00:42:56

The whole in that there is something about going into the center of a thing

Amanda Lux: 00:43:03

and eventually it's all the things

Kelly Watkins: 00:43:06

are there, turns it on.

Kelly Watkins: 00:43:08

The large, you know, the huge reverberated level, that's

Kelly Watkins: 00:43:12

what an enlightened person is.

Kelly Watkins: 00:43:14

Somebody that just sits in the drop of the thing.

Kelly Watkins: 00:43:16

He goes, yeah.

Kelly Watkins: 00:43:17

Mm-hmm.

Kelly Watkins: 00:43:18

. It's revolting and gorgeous and disgusting and disturbing and.

Kelly Watkins: 00:43:24

So I think what I'm saying is that it's a, it's an intimate walk that you sign up

Kelly Watkins: 00:43:29

for and you definitely want to take it.

Kelly Watkins: 00:43:31

And what you'll find is something that we don't even have language for and

Kelly Watkins: 00:43:37

it's fullness, if I could say that.

Kelly Watkins: 00:43:40

It's like tiny little molecules and little tiny threads of all the parts of yourself

Kelly Watkins: 00:43:45

you didn't even know you were missing.

Kelly Watkins: 00:43:47

And then you get to just sit there and hold that and know that you're safe.

Amanda Lux: 00:44:06

I love the wailing tub and I love just so many things that

Amanda Lux: 00:44:12

you shared about just being with yourself and that it's that it is a

Amanda Lux: 00:44:18

unique experience to everyone and that we get to just learn it on our own.

Amanda Lux: 00:44:24

Really, nobody can tell us how to do it.

Amanda Lux: 00:44:26

There are no maps for how to grieve.

Amanda Lux: 00:44:31

That we have to figure that out on our own.

Amanda Lux: 00:44:35

And yet there are, you know, some tools.

Amanda Lux: 00:44:39

I think in polarity the, probably the biggest tool I could think of is how to

Amanda Lux: 00:44:47

be in neutrality, how to come to all of our experiences from a place of curiosity.

Amanda Lux: 00:44:56

An openness and not needing to change it and having an, an ability to just

Amanda Lux: 00:45:02

allow things to be what they are.

Amanda Lux: 00:45:04

And that leads me to a place of trust of really deeply trusting that we do

Amanda Lux: 00:45:10

have this innate intelligence that is, is organized in a way beyond

Amanda Lux: 00:45:15

our knowing and that our experience and everything that we go through.

Amanda Lux: 00:45:21

Has some organizational factors to it as well, and I like to think from

Amanda Lux: 00:45:26

that place and polarity, when I come to my clients with that consciousness

Amanda Lux: 00:45:30

or come to my own suffering with that consciousness, I feel better.

Amanda Lux: 00:45:34

It's like there's this relief, this sense of, well, I know that there's something

Amanda Lux: 00:45:39

right about this, even if I don't know what that is and I know that I have what

Amanda Lux: 00:45:45

I need, even if I don't know what that is.

Amanda Lux: 00:45:49

In the moment, and I know that I'm here to meet this, that

Amanda Lux: 00:45:52

this is part of my journey.

Amanda Lux: 00:45:54

I'm meant to do this and that it's growing me in the direction

Amanda Lux: 00:45:58

that I need to be growing, even if it looks completely wrong.

Amanda Lux: 00:46:02

I know that through the perspective of polarity and that philosophy,

Amanda Lux: 00:46:06

that it's always right on some level.

Amanda Lux: 00:46:11

It can't be wrong if you're having the experience.

Amanda Lux: 00:46:14

It's the experience you're supposed to be having and to just come at it with

Amanda Lux: 00:46:17

that total neutrality of this is the experience I'm having, and to be in it

Amanda Lux: 00:46:23

and be with it, so totally and completely.

Amanda Lux: 00:46:26

It can't help but open up.

Amanda Lux: 00:46:28

That was

Kelly Watkins: 00:46:29

astonishingly gorgeous.

Kelly Watkins: 00:46:30

I like everything that you just said, and it's.

Kelly Watkins: 00:46:33

Exactly right.

Kelly Watkins: 00:46:34

That's exactly how it is for me and in our polarity world.

Kelly Watkins: 00:46:39

It's funny, you, you just made me realize a, a new way that I've

Kelly Watkins: 00:46:45

been in accessing neutrality.

Kelly Watkins: 00:46:48

You know how it is in our work, sometimes we, it's not so easy to be neutral,

Kelly Watkins: 00:46:53

especially around a subject or something, or a person that we care deeply about.

Kelly Watkins: 00:46:59

So.

Kelly Watkins: 00:47:01

, if I can just throw this out there since you've brought it up.

Kelly Watkins: 00:47:04

This is another thing that I used to do with my clients when they were,

Kelly Watkins: 00:47:09

um, in their stages of pain or in their stages of losing some function

Kelly Watkins: 00:47:15

in their bodies or physicality.

Kelly Watkins: 00:47:18

And it's funny how much it fits our work now, and it's actually how I do fulcrums

Kelly Watkins: 00:47:24

on when I'm about to begin a session.

Kelly Watkins: 00:47:25

I do this thing now.

Kelly Watkins: 00:47:28

It's almost like the 3D posters that we used to have where you stare off.

Kelly Watkins: 00:47:32

But I will name all the things I see, I'll say computer screen, the curtains,

Kelly Watkins: 00:47:36

the blind, this furniture that notebook, and I'm absorbing every single thing

Kelly Watkins: 00:47:42

that I see in it's full capacity.

Kelly Watkins: 00:47:45

And that tree that's six miles away in the moon and the thing, and that

Kelly Watkins: 00:47:49

bird that just flew by, and I'll just hold that pattern of the everything.

Kelly Watkins: 00:47:57

Everything Bagel , and I'll just hold that for literally 30 seconds

Kelly Watkins: 00:48:02

and it's almost like a vector.

Kelly Watkins: 00:48:03

And then I'm in my neutrality.

Kelly Watkins: 00:48:06

I'm like in the driver's seat of everything's okay.

Kelly Watkins: 00:48:09

It's all existing all at once.

Kelly Watkins: 00:48:12

It's all perfect.

Kelly Watkins: 00:48:13

Everything's right here, right now.

Kelly Watkins: 00:48:16

And I don't know, it's a funny little thing.

Kelly Watkins: 00:48:18

It just opens up a new room in my experie.

Amanda Lux: 00:48:23

So it sounds to me like you're describing a way of attuning

Amanda Lux: 00:48:28

to yourself that rather than attuning to having an earth or some idea of,

Amanda Lux: 00:48:36

you know, your spirit in the center of your body or some breath or something

Amanda Lux: 00:48:43

else that we might use, right.

Amanda Lux: 00:48:44

Or go to, you're attuning.

Amanda Lux: 00:48:47

Your energy and yourself to the present moment and to everything that's in the

Amanda Lux: 00:48:52

field that's vis visible to you, and there's something that just like puts

Amanda Lux: 00:48:58

you into the place of where you are.

Kelly Watkins: 00:49:01

Yeah, I, I mean, it's funny cuz when I used to teach clients

Kelly Watkins: 00:49:07

that are in the hospice world, I would probably be in bed with them,

Kelly Watkins: 00:49:10

which is really against the rules.

Kelly Watkins: 00:49:12

But that's probably where I would start, is being next to somebody to see what

Kelly Watkins: 00:49:16

the perspective is that they're having.

Kelly Watkins: 00:49:18

You could also do a chair.

Kelly Watkins: 00:49:19

You could just be there with yourself.

Kelly Watkins: 00:49:22

And just, uh, begin naming things.

Kelly Watkins: 00:49:26

And with the intention.

Kelly Watkins: 00:49:27

I would say before you start with the intention that you're going to try to

Kelly Watkins: 00:49:31

enter in the room of Everythingness and see what that feels like.

Kelly Watkins: 00:49:36

You're not trying to find anything.

Kelly Watkins: 00:49:37

Just see if you can access that cellular memory in your

Kelly Watkins: 00:49:41

body of being completely okay.

Kelly Watkins: 00:49:44

For just one.

Kelly Watkins: 00:49:44

Just for a.

Kelly Watkins: 00:49:46

with everything that you're aware of in your field.

Kelly Watkins: 00:49:48

And lord knows there's a million things we aren't aware of in our field.

Kelly Watkins: 00:49:52

But just, I'll start just naming things from the perspective that

Kelly Watkins: 00:49:56

this person is here with, with me.

Kelly Watkins: 00:49:58

And then males start saying, I hear a car, I feel the wound.

Kelly Watkins: 00:50:05

Um, my stomach hurt.

Kelly Watkins: 00:50:08

, I see that they're, you know, and just calling everything out that you could

Kelly Watkins: 00:50:12

possibly see in your visual field.

Kelly Watkins: 00:50:14

And adding to it.

Kelly Watkins: 00:50:15

And adding to it.

Kelly Watkins: 00:50:16

And adding to it until you think you've got it all.

Kelly Watkins: 00:50:19

And it's almost like a crass eye feeling.

Kelly Watkins: 00:50:22

Maybe like maybe you're just staring with everything coming in in symphony.

Kelly Watkins: 00:50:27

Mm-hmm.

Kelly Watkins: 00:50:28

that I think everybody's experienced that staring away feeling or staring

Kelly Watkins: 00:50:33

out into space thing where you can't wake up, you can't get out, it's.

Kelly Watkins: 00:50:37

, it's that that you're trying to capture, but you're inducing it and maybe you could

Kelly Watkins: 00:50:42

say you're inducing your own still point.

Kelly Watkins: 00:50:45

That's beautiful.

Kelly Watkins: 00:50:46

It feels to me like an etheric tool.

Kelly Watkins: 00:50:48

It feels like when you are trying to accept that all things can

Kelly Watkins: 00:50:54

exist and all are existing with or without your permission, and that

Kelly Watkins: 00:50:59

you have a place that's perfect and that there is a sequencing that you

Kelly Watkins: 00:51:03

aren't aware of, and that there.

Kelly Watkins: 00:51:06

Motion and movement and intelligence, like you said, working on your behalf.

Kelly Watkins: 00:51:10

So all that you're doing right now is to try to find the

Kelly Watkins: 00:51:13

muscle to get in that place.

Kelly Watkins: 00:51:16

I think people that are deep meditators have, um, you know, really easy tricks

Kelly Watkins: 00:51:23

of getting themselves into that place.

Kelly Watkins: 00:51:25

And maybe it is the same place for me.

Kelly Watkins: 00:51:28

I'm probably thinking of something a little more.

Kelly Watkins: 00:51:32

conscious maybe, or like workable.

Kelly Watkins: 00:51:35

From my perspective, it helps with accepting life.

Kelly Watkins: 00:51:40

Hmm

Amanda Lux: 00:51:42

hmm.

Amanda Lux: 00:51:43

Yeah.

Amanda Lux: 00:51:43

So whenever we're in a place, if we have something going on that is

Amanda Lux: 00:51:49

worthy of grieving or if we have ever experienced something that is.

Amanda Lux: 00:51:58

Throwing us off our game a little bit, right?

Amanda Lux: 00:52:01

And we're needing to find a way through the experience that we're

Amanda Lux: 00:52:08

having emotionally, physically, mentally, whatever it might be.

Amanda Lux: 00:52:13

Then one way is through this etheric tool that you're describing, one way

Amanda Lux: 00:52:19

to ground or center or find acceptance.

Amanda Lux: 00:52:25

Is to just start to name the things in your, that are in your visual

Amanda Lux: 00:52:28

field and to become aware of all the sensations and all of the things.

Amanda Lux: 00:52:33

It's a way of becoming fully present and that through that presence we

Amanda Lux: 00:52:39

come to a natural state of sort of more acceptance or neutrality.

Amanda Lux: 00:52:46

Right.

Amanda Lux: 00:52:47

And neutrality.

Amanda Lux: 00:52:49

And neutrality is just, It's the absence of a charge, right?

Amanda Lux: 00:52:53

We feel charged in a negative way, or we can feel charged in a positive way too.

Amanda Lux: 00:52:58

But neutrality is that that experience of not being charged about anything, of being

Amanda Lux: 00:53:05

in totally present with and in acceptance of an observation of what is right.

Kelly Watkins: 00:53:15

Beautiful.

Amanda Lux: 00:53:18

and that's a good place to be, especially in terms of, you know,

Amanda Lux: 00:53:22

when we're, when we have something really big going on or when we are wanting to

Amanda Lux: 00:53:27

honor grief in ourselves or with another, for another, then it can be helpful

Amanda Lux: 00:53:33

to tune into that as a tool, right?

Amanda Lux: 00:53:37

That way of how do we find acceptance in all things.

Amanda Lux: 00:53:42

and it starts with the the here and the now and the basic, what's

Amanda Lux: 00:53:45

in front of you, what's really happening, just what is this?

Amanda Lux: 00:53:49

And like we were saying earlier, of course, if you can get really,

Amanda Lux: 00:53:54

really, truly, deeply present with just what is everything, is there

Amanda Lux: 00:54:00

? Kelly Watkins: Right?

Amanda Lux: 00:54:01

Yeah, and I mean, grief aside, we could call everything that exists

Amanda Lux: 00:54:06

on a Tuesday grief right now.

Amanda Lux: 00:54:08

The world is full of reasons for grief of course, but we

Amanda Lux: 00:54:13

becoming neurologically resilient.

Amanda Lux: 00:54:16

Sounds so delicious.

Amanda Lux: 00:54:17

And I think that's what any of these things with our polarity worlds will

Amanda Lux: 00:54:23

definitely reveal is like, wow, you can become really strong in your.

Amanda Lux: 00:54:28

You can become really strong in the invisible ways that just

Amanda Lux: 00:54:32

make life feel supported and you didn't do an action to get it.

Amanda Lux: 00:54:37

You're just growing neurologically and nervous system.

Amanda Lux: 00:54:41

Yeah, and I think that that exercise that we just talked

Amanda Lux: 00:54:44

about, that to me is in that lane.

Amanda Lux: 00:54:48

It's in that vicinity of I'm just becoming strengthened with my invisible mesh.

Amanda Lux: 00:54:53

I don't even know what that means, but I'm becoming, my baseline

Amanda Lux: 00:54:56

is now 3.5 instead of minus two.

Amanda Lux: 00:55:00

Yes, yes.

Amanda Lux: 00:55:02

And I'm buoyant.

Amanda Lux: 00:55:03

And I'm bouncy, and I'm a little plump most days.

Amanda Lux: 00:55:06

And.

Amanda Lux: 00:55:07

can feel something all the way to its fullness and then I'd still let it roll.

Amanda Lux: 00:55:12

Well, yeah, and to me that's like, I'd rather have that than

Amanda Lux: 00:55:18

just about any super Tylenol.

Amanda Lux: 00:55:20

Hmm.

Amanda Lux: 00:55:21

To stay calm in a storm, genuinely like, wow, I really have those ingredients.

Amanda Lux: 00:55:28

It's not to say like you, it sucks to fold at the knees, and I do that too.

Amanda Lux: 00:55:35

I think it's all.

Amanda Lux: 00:55:37

\ related.

Amanda Lux: 00:55:38

Yeah, I love that.

Amanda Lux: 00:55:41

I really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts and your wisdom

Amanda Lux: 00:55:45

and some of your experience and tools.

Kelly Watkins: 00:55:50

So thank you.

Kelly Watkins: 00:55:51

Thank you.

Amanda Lux: 00:56:01

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of a Lone

Amanda Lux: 00:56:04

Traveler's Guide to the Divine.

Amanda Lux: 00:56:07

If you found this episode to be helpful, inspiring, supportive at all, please share

Amanda Lux: 00:56:15

it with someone you think would appreciate it and consider leaving a review on Apple

Amanda Lux: 00:56:21

Podcasts or wherever you're listening, that it would just mean so much to me.

Amanda Lux: 00:56:26

If you would like to learn more about Kelly Watkins, you can

Amanda Lux: 00:56:30

check out my website, elevation hive.com/ Kelly Watkins.

Amanda Lux: 00:56:35

I have an entire page dedicated to her awesomeness and you can learn

Amanda Lux: 00:56:40

more about her mourning circles and getting private session work with her.

Amanda Lux: 00:56:46

I also have a link in the show notes to my book, which you

Amanda Lux: 00:56:50

can purchase on amazon.com and.

Amanda Lux: 00:56:54

, you can learn more about my upcoming classes in polarity therapy, energy

Amanda Lux: 00:56:59

Medicine, and Dreamwork that are all listed on my website@elevationhive.com.

Amanda Lux: 00:57:06

I appreciate your.

Amanda Lux: 00:57:09

And participation in listening, and it is such an honor to be

Amanda Lux: 00:57:14

in sacred community with you.